Pay more for FAC to get better service?

Pay more money for grant/renewals? No thank you, not voluntarily. There is no direct correlation between the cost of the certificate and the quality of service, especially in such a decentralised system.

However, as most police forces make an operating loss on their FLDs, I can see there could be some price hikes in future. In the immortal words of Yazz:


There is no way the majority of constabularies are currently discharging their mandated responsibilities towards the FAC/SGC holder community at the moment, and this is down to a lack of will at the upper echelons of those constabularies, rather than problems that can be immediately solved by a cash injection.

10 year certificates? Considering that after every gun incident carried out by a legally-held weapon in the hands of the FAC/SGC holder, the overwhelming view from officialdom is that the renewal process at 5 years is too long. Read the newspapers and you will see that there have been opinions from serving police officers involved in licensing that FACs/SGCs should be renewed ANNUALLY! Clearly, a knee-jerk reaction and one that administratively would be unachievable but you can see the institutional resistance to a 10 year certificate.
 
You must also consider they do a lot of ”unpaid” work like, investigations into potentially revoking certificates, then issuing free certificates to section 1 gun clubs and section 11(6) exemptions for clay grounds and I guess other work to do with firearms and explosives. Yet they appear only to get financed by certificate applicants.

So no guarantee any extra we pay would improve the service we experience.
Since when have section 1 club cert’s been free?
 
We can discuss the pros and cons of the current licensing together with any improvements we would like until the cows come home, but one fact remains, the police, the government, the medical profession and the public at large all want to see the end of private gun ownership.
Not one of them will agree to anything that improves the situation for us as ultimately, the more barriers and inconveniences they place in our way, the more of our number will simply give up.
I have spent more than 50 years out in the fields, either accompanying my father as a nipper or as a shooter, but I fully expect to see the end of shooting as we know it within my lifetime.
 
This is why we need to encourage a younger generation in to shooting from air riles to all aspects.
Let clubs hold a open day with police attending ( IF ONLY)
 
Most improvements will come when the level of completely unnecessary work is removed.

The work should be there for when applying for the FAC. Once you have permission to possess a rifle, or two rifles or indeed three, can somebody please tell what is the point of requiring a variation to change one rifle for another. All it does is make unnecessary bureaucracy just for the sake of it.
 
Some very good and interesting responses. Back to my original post, I'll happily pay more for my FAC application..... If the extra fees actually were to go on a quicker and smoother, more thorough service. The idea of a central entire country FAC office makes a lot of sense. Certainly seems right now like one thing done 40 odd ways through all the counties (what!??)
Now 10 months into my application, it's gone from frustrating, to unacceptable, I'd now say it's verging on incompetence. We all play by the law as responsible people, but this is getting silly.
 
Totally disagree, the more money you give to any government funded body ... The more they waste -Fact! don't matter what and who is in charge they hemorrhage cash because failure brings in more money and actually making a profit means the government give them less of it !
Besides have you ever had an FEO who knew what they were doing?
its honestly like giving a dog a treat every time they get it wrong.
 
I am afraid that I have to ask "why would anybody suggest that we should pay more for tickets"? People read these threads and will use it as an argument that the shooting community is not opposed to an increase in fees. Some things don't need posting on a public forum.

Rant over.

David.
 
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Well said

Systems broken ….. and it’s their own fault ….. licensing depts phone RFDs weekly across tue nation because they have no f$&@ing clue where thousands of firearms are …
If you email them about buying selling whatever keep copies of email in a dedicated folder to cover your ar5e !

As said above you pay more monies … no way it’s going back into that dept or area

We should be getting service we pay for already

Paul
 


Approval also allows the police to grant a free firearm certificate to a responsible officer of the club to enable him or her to purchase and acquire firearms and ammunition for members to use for target shooting. Club members may not purchase or acquire firearms or ammunition unless they have been granted a personal firearm certificate by the police.

 
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